


Dies Solis

by PNGuin



Series: Dux Bellorum One-Shots [1]
Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst with a Happy Ending, Gratuitous Historical References, M/M, Magnus Bane Loves Alec Lightwood, Magnus Bane-centric, Magnus has lived a long and difficult life, Mentions of Magnus' previous lovers, Recreational Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-30
Updated: 2018-12-30
Packaged: 2019-09-30 04:07:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17216708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PNGuin/pseuds/PNGuin
Summary: It’s 1963, and Magnus is alone.  Etta James’ soulful voice drifts across from the record player.  He tips back the last dregs of his scotch, idly waves his hand to refill the crystal tumbler, leans back into the plush armchair embracing him, and takes a long drag from the expertly rolled joint loosely held between his fingers.  He can’t help but agree with the lyrics coloring the air around him.He too wants a Sunday kind of love.





	Dies Solis

**Author's Note:**

> I was at work one day when Etta James' rendition of "Sunday Kind of Love" came on, and it inspired me to write this out. I would definitely suggest listening to the song; it is very good and I adore Etta James.
> 
> Title translates to "day of sun."

His steps are silent against the floor as he lazily strolls through his apartment. It’s a new place this week, a cheap little hovel hidden away in the East Village. It’s shittier than his typical accommodations, cramped and sandwiched in a building that has far too many people living in it. There’s always noise from the neighbors, or from the streets a mere three stories down, or from the police sirens that seem to constantly run. He likes it. Or, at the very least, he likes how it drowns out everything else.

Magnus likes the 1960s, so far. Sure, he’s only three years in – some rather terrible three years, at that – but his own completely unbiased opinion on it is that anything is an improvement after the 40s and 50s. The 60s seem to be a time for _his people_. Outcasts, freaks, weirdoes, queers, whatever word people want to hurl at them. Those who spend their days out on the streets screaming to be heard, and who party their nights away in blissful hazes. Magnus blends right in with these crowds.

It’s a novel feeling, and he’s stuck in a revolving loop of enjoying it and disdaining it. He’s always been the life of the party, has always stood out as the _king of hedonism_. He’s always been the driving force that has compelled otherwise straight-laced people to fall under the influence of his own favorite luxuries, has always been the tempter, the forbidden fruit, that has charmed and partied his way through life. It’s almost insulting to his centuries-long reputation that the mundanes of the 1960s seem capable of partying just as hard as he.

Not to say that Magnus has been slacking, or that he isn’t still the king of hedonism. He most certainly is. Hell, he _taught_ most of the current party-brats how to do it well. Now he’s merely reaping the rewards from his tutelage.

The 1960s have so far offered him nearly all of his favorite things in life: good music, potent drugs, sharp alcohol, and a near unlimited supply of overzealous bed partners. It reminds him of the 1920s, but in a way that is far less ‘carefree frivolity’ and is far more ‘vitriolic passion’. The heat of it simmers through the streets of New York, sizzling with a barely contained tension. He can feel it in the rumble of construction as they excavate the old buildings, cauterizing the rotting vestiges of the past, and replace them with the new-fangled ideas of modern architecture. It’s in the echo of gunshots that ring out almost nightly, and in the crowds of peaceful protesters that collapse into riots, and in that ever-increasing rift between the _old_ and the _new_.

Magnus has seen it before. Many, many times. Every few decades or so there is enough social pressure to tip the scales in some radically different direction. The younger generation grows up in a world vastly different from their parents, and the ensuing battle of wills often tears entire societies apart. The current times seem particularly divisive, even by Magnus’ standards. The youth that he’s encountered are the most perplexing combination of passionate demand for a revolution and dispassionate yearning for oblivion.

It’s a dichotomy that Magnus knows far too well, one which has burned away deep in his soul for the vast majority of his life. He doesn’t quite know how to feel about seeing it so thoroughly reflected in the city that he chose as his home so many years ago. On the one hand, it seems fitting for the High Warlock to so perfectly match his city. On the other, it feels as if it’s a cruel mockery for all the emotions that Magnus refuses to put into words.

There’s a commotion from outside. His windows are propped open, the creaking glass panes held up purely by magic and strength of will. He doesn’t have air conditioning and he’s been far too preoccupied to meticulously layer on any cooling additions to his wards; it’s July and the heat is sweltering, wafting into his apartment and laying a hazy blanket over him that muddles his brain. The crumbling walls of the old brick apartment building are thin, and even his soundproofing wards aren’t capable of keeping all the noise out. Magnus hears the sound of uncoordinated marching feet, the shouts of (another) protest rising up from fired hearts, the rattling of signs and posts as they clatter against each other.

He wonders what it is this time. It’s always something. Always another war, always another group of people being oppressed, always another reason to cry and scream out into the streets of the city. Once upon a time, he would have gladly joined them, would have been the one leading the fray. But he knows something about survival that they don’t. It’s the loudest who die the quickest. Magnus is all for social revolution and liberation, but his memories of the wars he has seen weigh heavily on his shoulders. Most of them are distant now, faded away by the centuries that have passed, vague and dislocated in a way that is similar to staring at the old black and white photos in a history book.

But there are things he still remembers, things that have enough emotional baggage that he doesn’t think he’ll ever forget. Toussaint’s grimace as they were forced to abandon La Tannerie to the French. Olympe’s head rolling onto the bloodstained platform after the fall of the guillotine. George’s goodbye kiss before he marched off to face the Confederacy at the Battle of Antietam. The hundreds of concentration camp prisoners that he portaled out, expending his magic until his legs collapsed and he could no longer breathe. The sight of his mother’s homeland ravaged by war as the natives finally freed themselves from the Dutch Empire.

He doesn’t regret those memories. He doesn’t regret all the little pieces of himself that he gave away. He doesn’t regret the people he knew and loved, the people he fought alongside, the people who made him who he is.

He regrets that he gave _too much_ away, he regrets that he has nothing left to give, that now he feels lifeless and depleted and so impossibly old compared to the young and vibrant voices ringing out on the streets below. He regrets that he just _doesn’t care anymore_. Not like he wants to, not like he should.

But he doesn’t. And he can’t quite find the care necessary to change that.

Magnus collapses gracelessly into one of his overstuffed armchairs and surveys his apartment with all the lackadaisical whimsy of an especially bored king. There are empty bottles everywhere, stains spreading along the carpet and the upholstery, remnants of powder tracks littered over any and all flat surfaces, discarded clothes are tossed haphazardly in every which direction. Some of it belongs to him, but most of it is unfamiliar and invokes no sensation or emotion in his hollow heart.

He just finished up kicking out the lingering crowd from last night, shooing them away and tossing clothes in their direction, not even caring if they were the right size or not. They all fled willingly enough. Everyone in this part of town knows how to party, and they know how to drag themselves back to their own crevices of the world once their welcome is overstayed. Magnus almost finds it within himself to feel bad for his sharp manner in disposing of last night’s fancies. He knows that many of them do not have safe homes to return to. He doesn’t quite care, especially not when the stickiness of bared flesh that warmed his bed becomes a nuisance and he suddenly needs nothing more than to be alone.

Every time it happens, every time he throws parties and loses himself to the rhythm of strangers’ bodies, every time he then snaps at them to vacate his property as soon as he’s done with them, he can’t help but think about how _proud_ Camille would be of his growing apathy.

The apartment is still trashed, and he could clean it all with a simple wave of his hand. He doesn’t. He lets it gather dust, just like that jaded pathetic little thing he calls a heart, and he ignores it. A crystal tumbler is in his hand without conscious thought, the deep burn of alcohol a familiar friend as he downs the glass. Scotch on the rocks. His heartbreak drink. He’s been drowning in it for over a century now. He wonders when he’ll finally stop drinking it all the time.

There’s a joint held loosely in his fingers, expertly wrapped in delicate floral patterned paper. It’s a special batch that Magnus routinely gets from a seelie contact he has. He doesn’t know what special herbs the seelie adds to it that makes it potent enough to work on a warlock, but Magnus can appreciate it even without that knowledge. The seelie is a bit of a kingpin when it comes to the good shit, and it doesn’t hurt that he’s a damn good fuck as well. Either way, it helps to pass a bit of time.

Magnus flicks his fingers to light the end of the joint and takes a long drag of it. He lets the smoke and the burn of alcohol fill up all the hollow spaces left behind from the pieces of himself he gave away. It’s a temporary fix, a cheap bandage slapped over a gaping wound. But so long as Magnus keeps reapplying it, it at least keeps all the blood from seeping out and staining his favorite clothes.

Distantly, he’s aware of what’s happening to him. It feels miles away, as if he’s isolated from the circumstances even when he’s sitting right in the ruins of his own sanity. There’s a coldness in him now, a static solidness that freezes his insides into stone. It’s been growing for his entire life, occasionally beaten back by the friends he has made and the lovers he has had, but always encroaching. Warlocks do not face the ever approaching countdown to death; but that does not stop their own morbid ending from following them all their lives, an ever-present force at the edges of their awareness.

He’s calcifying. His heart is turning into stone. He’s fading, uncaring and jaded and so apathetic to the world. It’s everything that he hates, and it’s everything that Camille would want for him.

In a sudden fit of affronted anger, Magnus flicks his hand towards his record player. He no longer yearns for the silence of his loneliness. He can’t stand the thought of wallowing in it. Magnus needs _sound_. He doesn’t even consciously pick a record, just lets his magic take free reign and decide upon something. It doesn’t matter; all he needs is something with noise, something voiced, something he can hum along to and pretend that the singer’s voice is in his apartment right beside him. Maybe then he won’t feel quite so lonely.

Etta James’ soulful voice drifts over to him from the record player. Her voice reminds him painfully of his own Etta. It’s full-bodied and it echoes wistfully through the emptiness of his messy apartment, bouncing off of the discarded bottles and stirring the leftover powdered trails. It’s an old song, one that Magnus remembers hearing in decades previous, covered again and again by some of the greatest singers of the times. The longing in her bellowing tones strike at his heart with cutting accuracy, and Magnus finds himself sinking deeper into the upholstery, curling up as much as the limited space allows. He leans his cheek down until it rests there and he brings his arms around himself, tight enough to hurt, tight enough to pretend.

He looks around his destroyed apartment, taking in the littered mess from last night’s orgy. None of it feels like it belongs; a temporary few hours of warmth and enthusiasm, followed by the rapid drop in mood, the iciness that creeps into his body, the heavy silence that descends in the wake of him kicking everyone out. He hears the shouting and marching outside, and he knows with a growing dread that there will be tear-gassed victims later in the day. He might spend the day preparing some potions to help those who stagger his way.

For now, a choked sob shutters up from his chest, ripping out past the barricades that he built up long ago in a different land. It shivers in the air of his apartment, dancing jaggedly through the empty room. It rattles the discarded bottles and stirs the powder trails and echoes pitifully throughout the devastating loneliness.

There’s no one to hear it.

There, alone in his decrepit and isolated apartment, Magnus knows what his calcifying heart needs in order to survive. He agrees all too desperately with Etta James. Magnus, too, would like a Sunday kind of love.

* * *

Magnus begrudgingly blinks his eyes open with all the reluctant grogginess of an impromptu nap. He can feel the crustiness of sleep sand threatening to glue his eyelids shut, and he rubs away the gunk with an accompanying yawn. His arms reach up in a luxurious stretch that cracks several points in his spine, but his movement is largely inhibited by the weight in his lap.

Late afternoon light is filtering in through the windows. A gentle summer breeze floats in through the open French doors that lead out to the balcony. The wind causes the sheer white curtains to billow and flutter. Some of his favorite incense was left burning when he passed out, and the smell of it pervades the loft, sharp and heady. Music is playing, soft as it dances idly around the loft.

An ancient warlock tome is resting precariously on the edge of the couch’s armrest, still miraculously open to the page that Magnus had dozed off on. He sees his own looping handwriting scrawled along the margins, where he notoriously jots down notes necessary for the potions and spells he may need later, and he can see the long jagged line of graphite from where he had passed out mid-sentence. Magnus doesn’t even remember where he had been going with his thought process. His client will just have to wait another day or so.

A quiet, snuffling snore interrupts his thoughts. He doesn’t even try to stop the smile that curls at his lips. He doesn’t think he possibly ever _could_ stop it. His lips stretch until his cheeks almost hurt and little crinkles form at the delicate skin around his eyes. Magnus never thought he would live to see a day where he relished in such wrinkles, but now he treasures each smile that draws them out. His heart seems to swell with something warm and bright, filling all the empty spaces that had once eaten away at his soul, clearing all the cobwebs that had gathered over the loveless years.

As always, his eyes are drawn to his side, where his Alexander is laying sprawled out on the couch. The shadowhunter is a good bit taller than the couch is long, so his lean frame is curled up, back arched and knees bent slightly. Given the July heat that simmers throughout the city, his darling nephilim is sparsely clad, wearing only a pair of sinfully short, skin-tight boxer briefs and an old cotton t-shirt that has stretched out over the years. His face is turned towards the back of the couch and is half smushed, the quiet little snores that Alec still insists don’t exist muffled by the fabric of the sofa. Discarded on his chest, steadily inching closer to the edge of the couch, is the book that Alec has been reading, an old anthology of firsthand accounts from warlocks that predate the writing of the Accords. Alec had softly asked Magnus if he could read it, all charming hesitance and liquid hazel eyes; Magnus hadn’t even thought to say no.

His feet are resting in Magnus’ lap, utterly bare save for the glittery hot pink polish messily smeared on his toenails. A gift lovingly bestowed upon the nephilim by Madzie. For all that Alec seems to be a looming, surly asshole to the vast majority of the world, Magnus has the privilege of seeing how that exterior gives way to an infinitely gentle and loving interior when around those he loves, particularly children. Alec can’t ever seem to say _no_ to any of the kids he’s come in contact with, and the little character quirk is enough to absolutely obliterate any and all of Magnus’ walls.

The warlock’s heart gives a large, steady _thump_ deep in his chest. It’s a heady, invigorating, _unfamiliar_ feeling that he had lived entire centuries without. A beat that had started not even a year ago, when he had first laid his eyes upon _Mr. Tall, Dark, and Handsome_ in the low lighting of Pandemonium. A beat that had steadily grown and settled until it was entirely expected.

At first, that unprecedented sensation had terrified Magnus, had pushed him to try and maintain some semblance of distance, even as he was pulling Alec ever nearer in their relationship. Always wanting _more_ , yet always keeping his Alexander at arm’s length. But Magnus knows what it is now, knows what that emotion is that captivates his heart and floods through his veins. Each beat is the heavy mallet that breaks off the layers of calcification that have crowded in on his heart, invasive and draining. Each beat is the life that renews itself whenever he catches a glimpse of messy dark hair, brilliant hazel eyes, a beautiful smile that could light the whole world.

Magnus’ heart feels so full that he almost fears he will burst. It’s a distinct and abrupt difference from the centuries of emptiness that had plagued him, of the hollow caverns in his chest that had echoed endlessly within him all his life. He loves his Alexander more than he ever thought possible, more than he thinks their world can even contain. Magnus is fairly sure that his love must overflow into Hell, into Heaven itself, just to make room for it all. He loves his Alexander so much that he doesn’t even know what to do sometimes.

Alec shifts and mumbles something in his sleep. It’s too quiet for Magnus to hear, but he’s positive it’s some nonsensical ramblings. Instead of trying to decipher the pleasantly low rumble of Alec’s voice, Magnus lets his eyes wash over his face – relaxed and delicate in sleep like it never is in his waking hours – and trail down the length of his arm, until his focus rests entirely on his hand. Specifically, on the fourth finger of his left hand.

It’s too soon, he knows. They haven’t even been together for one full year. A minuscule amount of time compared to the entirety of his existence. And yet. His mind has latched onto the thought, has clung to this one singular fixation. He gives in to the impulse and allows his mind to conjure up images of a beautiful ring resting on that finger. He imagines preparing some over the top dinner, complete with Alec’s favorite Spanish dish (paella – the authentic kind, straight from Valencia) and some of that ridiculously bubbly champagne that always makes Alec all giggly and cuddly. He imagines dropping down onto one knee, and pulling the ring out of his pocket, and pouring his heart out for the man he loves. He imagines how Alec’s face will split with a breathtaking, heart-stopping smile, how his eyes will tear up, how both of them will clutch at each other and cry, how Alec will say _‘yes’_ in a tremulous joyful voice that will echo forever in Magnus’ heart, how Magnus’ hand will shake as he delicately slides the ring onto Alec’s finger.

One day. That’s the promise that Magnus gives himself. They’re not ready for that yet. It’s still too early. But one day.

Etta James’ voice floats over to him, still just as enchanting and beautiful as her voice has always been. He recognizes the song immediately. It’s a classic, and so many wonderful artists have produced covers of it, but he’s still inordinately attached to Etta’s version of it. Her wistfulness washes over him, just as it had over fifty years ago. But this time it doesn’t crash over his head, pulling him down into the depths of isolation and agony. This time, Magnus doesn’t let himself drown.

His eyes settle on his Alexander’s resting figure, curled up and relaxed on his couch, and he lets the love flood through his veins. It’s calming and invigorating, all contradictory and complementary. If this is the life Magnus gets now, with his angel by his side, then all the centuries of slow calcification were worth it. His fingers trace the delicate little bones of his lover’s ankles and Magnus lets Etta lull him back to sleep. He no longer finds himself feeling the melancholy and wistfulness of her tone.

He finally has his Sunday love.

**Author's Note:**

> A short explanation for all of Magnus' gratuitous historical references:  
> Toussaint refers to François-Dominique Toussaint Louverture, who was one of the most well-known leaders of the resistance during the Haitian Revolution. In 1793, he had to flee Fort La Tannerie and abandon it to the French General Étienne Maynaud in one of his greatest defeats.  
> Olympe de Gouges (born Marie Gouze) was a French playwright and political activist who focused on women's rights and abolition. She was executed by guillotine during the Reign of Terror (1793-1794).  
> George refers to one of Magnus' ex-lovers (whose picture is kept in the infamous season three box). He was a Union soldier during the American Civil War, who fought and died in the Battle of Antietam (September 17, 1862).  
> The concentration camps are pretty self-evident. Nazi Germany.  
> The motherland comment refers to the Indonesian National Revolution, an armed conflict and diplomatic struggle between the Republic of Indonesia and the Dutch Empire from 1945-1949.
> 
> I hope you all enjoyed the story (and the impromptu history lesson)!
> 
> ~PNGuin


End file.
